Issue 5 Spring 2010

Issue 5

Spring 2010

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 2010

The Institution held its Annual General Meeting for 2010 as last year on the last Saturday in January (January 30th.) at The Holiday Inn, Ellesmere Port.

Topics on the agenda this year included a discussion of the implications of the Charities Act, possible future directions for the Institution, and an update on the Institution’s role in the Arkwright Scholarship Scheme.

Implications of changes to the Charities Act

With regard to the changes to the Charities Act (reported in Issue 3 of The Electron), it was pointed out that there is, as of now, no such thing as an educational charity, which the Institution has been for many years. Whilst, however, charities must in future exist for the public benefit, the current status of the Institution appears to make it well placed to remain as a charity, given that no charges are made for training centres that are approved by the Institution, nor for participation in the 70 or so programmes that are made available for the public benefit through its website. The Institution therefore considers that it may possibly serve as a good model for other institutions and educational charities that may now be faced with a dilemma as a result of changes to the Charities Act.

Institution discussions

The Institution, with regard to its future, has been in discussion with The Foundation for Science and Technology, The Society of Environmental Engineers, and The Worshipful Company of Engineers, all of which have responded positively to suggestions for cooperation.

Ideas for a possible merger were floated, but declined by the Institution on the grounds that its identity and role, as a voice for the electronics professional in certain applied fields and as a potential grant-awarding body for students in relevant disciplines, should be preserved. A more likely outcome therefore is that one or more of the bodies engaged in the discussions may lend assistance toward the objective of undertaking larger and potentially more lucrative projects than those with which the Institution is currently involved, with the aim of securing mutual benefits. The sharing of a body of knowledge is also under consideration.

Update on Arkwright

The Institution is closely linked with the Arkwright Scholarship Scheme and continues to report on the progress of students who have benefited from the Institution’s sponsorship of it, as reported in 2009.

The current position is that students who are currently passing through Institution of Electronics Approved Training Centres, and who subsequently graduate, having received an Arkwright scholarship, should be awarded the grade of Grad Inst E upon graduation so as to encourage them to become full members.

The method by which the above might be achieved is, as yet, unclear, but one solution that has been proposed is that relevant departments of universities, such as electronics, electrical engineering or physics, could be invited to become Approved Training Centres such that they themselves will be empowered to award the grade of Grad Inst E to interested suitable candidates.

It is envisaged that Arkwright may provide some sponsorship toward this end, although shared sponsorship between the Institution, The Company of Worshipful Engineers and The Society of Environmental Engineers is being considered.

It was generally accepted that the Institution wishes to remain very much associated with education as well as retaining its status both as a charity and as a professional body.

U.C. EXPO 2010

Across industries, companies of all sizes are embracing the concept of Unified Communications that is the integrated delivery of voice, data and video, to achieve the goals of:

Improvement of employee productivity by transforming the way people communicate.

Integration of the communication system into business processes.

Delivery of communications services with superior reliability and availability.

Reduction of capital and operating expenditures.

It is an important growth area for the electronics professional, with market earned revenues of

46.9 million Euros in 2009 being expected to increase to 1.6 billion Euros by 2014 (Frost and Sullivan, ‘European Cloud-based Unified Communications Services Market’ – www.conferencing.frost.com).

With this background Imago Technology staged its sixth U.K. Expo exhibition and conference at London’s Olympia Centre on 10th and 11th March. It featured just over 100 exhibitors and around the same number of presentations. In this and the next issue of The Electron topical items related to the subject of U.C. will be highlighted for the interest of the applied electronics professional.

HOSTED U.C. : COMMUNICATIONS IN THE CLOUD

Richard Quine, Product Director, Voice and Unified Communications for InTechnology, presented a paper entitled ‘Hosted Unified Communications: Communications in the Cloud’.

He stated that whilst it was still common for organisations to piece together Unified Communications themselves, this was not necessarily the optimum solution. A better approach may well be to utilise the now hotly debated concept of cloud computing, with all functionality delivered from within the network.

The case for this was made with reference to four key advantages:

Implementation – the infrastructure work has already been done, so the organisation can just connect rather than spend years trying to connect with a complexity that is frequently not realised until late on in the project.

Budget – A fully managed Internet Protocol (IP) telephony service is available for a price of £8 per month, whilst an IP PBX can cost £1,000.

Priorities – InTechnology has already invested £100 million in a world-class shared infrastructure.

Risk – InTechnology has a squad of technical consultants who can roll out the system and maintain it as part of an ongoing service whereby if any component fails a back-up can take over immediately.

The point was made that most IPT vendors charge for updates every two years whether they are wanted or not, and that this cost is considerable (up to £100,000). By contrast the system from InTechnology uses no phones, does not require any phone lines to be installed, and is devoid of maintenance charges.

Savings are reported to be “considerable”.

Those interested in receiving further information on this topic are invited to contact Richard.quine@intechnology.com

U.C. DEPLOYMENT: SOME FACTS AND FIGURES

According to FaceTime’s fifth annual survey U.C. platforms are viewed by 58% of I.T. professionals as providing little or no risk. By contrast 89% of these professionals identified public instant messaging tools, which often coexist in the same environment, as carrying some or a great deal of risk. This, according to FaceTime, “highlights the lack of understanding of the threats that still exist when deploying U.C.”

Another finding was that Web chat featured in 95% of organisations, but was recognised by only 31% of I.T. managers, which FaceTime state “shows vivid differences between I.T. estimates and reality.”

The use of Internet applications has grown from being present in 78% of enterprises in 2007 to 99% of enterprise networks in 2010, with tools ranging from public I.M., Skype, file sharing, web conferencing and IPTV becoming commonplace. Unfortunately this also carries a downside with evasive techniques such as port-hopping, protocol tunnelling, and encryption, which many legitimate real-time communication applications use to bypass traditional security measures, “providing the perfect opportunity for malware to enter in and for information to leak out.”

Unified Communications suites were found to exist at 34% of I.T. respondent organisations, which shows a rise of 29% from 2009. Of these 10% have deployed to a limited number of users, while 24% have deployed U.C. for the majority of their end users. Large enterprises (with more than 20,000 employees) have, not surprisingly, deployed more U.C. platforms than any other size of organisation, accounting for 42% of deployment. Around 30% of organisations apparently have no plans to adopt Unified Communications.

The survey, conducted in December 2009, compared end user attitudes with I.T. perceptions and yielded 1,654 responses. This data was then compared with actual traffic gathered from 155 FaceTime Unified Security Gateway security appliances deployed globally.

Copies of the survey may be obtained from http://www.facetime.com.

UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS ROUND TABLE

The prestigious L’Oranger restaurant in London was chosen as the venue for an all-important Dining Club round-table event on the subject of Unified Communications in December 2009. The event was hosted by Computer Business Review (www.cbronline.com) in association with Microsoft and Aspect (a leader in applying U.C. and collaboration.

Microsoft has built a comprehensive portfolio of market-leading U.C. applications that can be deployed easily and cost-effectively by its mature base of Microsoft Exchange users and two years ago they invested in Aspect as a strategic partner for U.C. Since then Aspect have assisted organisations to maximise their benefits from their Microsoft U.C. applications.

The current situation is that Aspect has around 2,000 users worldwide running their entire telephony and communications on Microsoft Office Communications Server R2. This includes instant messaging (I.M.), peer-to-peer or point-to-point telephony and video, including full Enterprise Voice and collaboration with SharePoint. The key observation is that there is no private branch exchange (PBX) infrastructure. It is a completely new generation of electronic technology applied to communications.

The argument in favour of U.C. as presented by Aspect is that it harmonises multiple types of communication, with savings that are quite substantial. Aspect has, for example, saved $1 million in conferencing costs and $300,000 per location on telephony maintenance, handset costs and communication between its global offices over the past year.

With U.C. messages arrive in the most suitable format for the device, location and status of the recipient. ‘Presence’ capabilities enable someone sending a message to know if the recipient is available, for example for a call, instant message or video conference. The ‘follow me’ capability enables emails to be heard as voicemails and vice-versa.

The discussion examined the start-point for organisations considering U.C. adoption, which, according to Aspect, involves enhancing and building on existing investments, and adding value by improving user adoption. The improved ability of employees to work from home was cited as being a strong incentive to adopt U.C., along with reduction of operating costs and enhanced productivity.

More is explained in the February 2010 issue of Computer Business Review, and in the White Paper ‘Reducing Operational Costs and increasing Staff Efficiency by integrating the Communications Environment with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2: A Case Study on Aspect’, published by IDC (www.idc.com).

BLENDED INTERACTION: A UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS APPLICATION FOR THE CONTACT CENTRE

Aspect Software Inc. has introduced a new application to simplify and automate customer services, sales and collections processes known as Blended Interaction.

The new application unites inbound routing, Internet contact, voice portal, outbound dialling and workforce management capabilities. Leveraging either session initiative protocol (SIP) – based voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) or traditional voice, it scales from tens to thousands of agent positions in a single or multi-site environment. It brings business rules, best practices and administration into a centrally managed platform and simplifies training for managers and supervisors. Also, with contact centre applications in a single software platform, the cost and complexity of maintaining and integrating legacy point solutions is eliminated.

Aspect state:

‘With Blended Interaction, agents log into one system one time, versus using multiple logins to access multiple systems. Agents can seamlessly transition between inbound and outbound services, change from answering a call to answering an email, or move from one campaign to another when traffic changes. As a result they have more time to focus on customers.’

More information is available from www.aspect.com or by contacting their European and African headquarters at 2 The Square, Stockley Park, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB11 1AD. Telephone: 020 8589 1000.

CASE STUDY IN UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS: PBX CENTRAL AND ACULAB

The integration of new technology into a legacy network can be expensive and problematic in terms of disruptions in service delivery and radical changes in form and function, which can often be a tipping point that motivates customers to seek out alternative services. There is a definite challenge for the hosted provider in being able to move its offerings seamlessly to a next generation platform without creating a negative impact on its customers’ businesses, and avoiding the enormous expense of replacing outdated infrastructure every time a new technology wave hits.

PBX Central, a hosted communications provider based in Austin, Texas, needed to find answers to these migration challenges. As a hosted provider they support some 200,000 end users around the U.S.A. both through their direct service offerings and through software licensed to other providers.

KBX, its proprietary communications solution, was initially built on a TDM platform. This first generation product was capable of providing the core IP functionality that its customers required, but was not the ideal foundation upon which to deliver the next generation of services that would redefine the market.

The Chief Executive Officer of PBX Central, Mark Castleman, stated:

“Our management team understood that the time would come when we would need to port over our core technology to an IP-based platform that would better position us for future growth. The key was finding a partner that clearly had the enabling technology that would allow us to move into an IP environment as seamlessly as possible.”

Aculab, who have experience in developing enabling technologies that allow service providers, applications developers and enterprises to integrate new technologies into existing infrastructure, were selected as that partner. They subsequently introduced the concept of extensibility, that is, extending the lifecycle of legacy networks.

The Product Manager for Aculab, Andrew Nicholson, stated:

“We speak with many businesses and service providers who are eager to offer next-generation services to their customers, but must find cost-effective and transparent vehicles to make this happen. That’s why so many providers embrace extensibility. It minimises the investment and disruption normally associated with the delivery of new technology.”

After meeting with PBX Central and understanding their specific goals and challenges, Aculab put together a solution centred on Prosody S, a software-based host media processing platform that provides a flexible and reliable foundation for providers that are looking to expand their service offerings whilst at the same time retaining much of their existing infrastructure. By relying on the ability of Prosody S to equally manage functionalities originating in TDM and SIP environments, PBX Central created a non-disruptive path to an IP-based platform, which gave them an important competitive advantage.

The Chief Technology Officer for PBX Central, Charlie Miller, stated:

“When Aculab first discussed Prosody S with us, we were very intrigued by the concept of a software-based platform that could handle not only the variety of traffic the KBX solution supports, but also new services available through SIP. What was particularly interesting was that we could not find any other vendor that offered a software-based enabling solution.”

Through the software-based approach of Prosody S, PBX Central found that it could migrate existing TDM-based applications to a SIP-based environment with relative ease. This seamless transition was especially important as PBX Central rolled out new SIP-based services. This is because one of the main benefits of SIP is its ability to drive functionality to the end point, introducing new features at the desktop, but this often comes at the expense of interfering with user behaviour. With Prosody S. however, this did not occur.

Aculab, for their part, are the first communications technology vendor to offer a Dual Redundant SIP service (DRSS) in a core product line. Their approach centres around the face that whilst SIP-based communications are among the fastest growing services in both business and consumer-based networks and applications, most industry experts, providers and customers are of the opinion that these networks do not have the same level of reliability and redundancy as traditional telecom networks, which rely heavily on Signalling System #7 (SS7) to ensure uptime and connection reliability. The DRSS addresses this by helping service providers to achieve IP network reliability that is on a par with TDM-based SS7 networks.

The Sales and Marketing Director for Aculab, Chris Gravett, stated:

“A growing number of service providers are choosing an IP infrastructure to deliver mission critical services, like voice, conferencing – even emergency services – to consumers and enterprises. While IP networks offer a number of profound economic and operational benefits, they have evolved in a ‘best effort’ environment and do not possess the same inherent degree of resilience and redundancy as traditional PSTN networks. Our Dual Redundant SIP service helps these providers meet the needs of their customers by increasing the reliability of IP networks to a level similar to legacy TDM environments.”

More information about this feature may be obtained from jp.taylor@aculab.com (telephone: 01908 273 800).

NEW SIMPLIFIED U.C. PRODUCT FAMILIES FOR OFFICE, MOBILE AND REMOTE WORKERS

A new set of Unified Communications audio solutions for office, mobile and remote workers has been introduced by Plantronics Inc.

The new solutions, including a USB desk phone and premium corded handsets, are said to deliver ‘brilliant audio, unmatched quality and ease of use across all work environments.’

The Plantronics Unified Communications product portfolio is now organised into the product families of Blackwire (TM), Calisto (R), and Plantronics Voyager (R). These simplified product families are designed for easy I.T. decision-making and many products provide full call control functions for U.C. applications from partners including Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft and Skype.

Vice President of Product Marketing for Plantronics, Ms. Elizabeth Bastiaanse Hamren, comments:

“Voice is paramount in Unified Communications because it enables us to be more expressive and engaged. Workers won’t adopt U.C. solutions if they can’t trust the audio to be clear and reliable, so it’s imperative that both I.T. and end users be able to quickly match an audio solution to their work style and audio needs. We developed our new solutions to enhance the U.C. experience with audio that gives the feeling of true ‘face-to-face’ conversations and the reliability that people have come to expect.”

Plantronics further state:

‘The new Plantronics Unified Communications product families give I.T. departments a single trusted vendor for a wide variety of audio solutions. From executives in the corner office to mobile sales teams to knowledge workers around campus or in the office, Plantronics’ breadth of current options enable clear, reliable conversations across an array of environments. Equally important, the audio solutions are easy to use and install, so I.T. departments aren’t burdened with support requests.’

The Plantronics U.C. blog is: http://ucblog.plantronics.com

UK’s FIRST MICROSOFT ALL-IN-ONE U.C. APPLIANCE

Eurodata Systems, one of the UK’s leading systems integrators and I.T. service providers, have launched the UK’s first Microsoft all-in-one U.C. appliance. It allows organisations to get U.C. up and running at new levels of speed and ease and is designed particularly to help small and medium-sized enterprises (S.M.E.s) with up to 1000 users.

Major advantages, according to Eurodata, are:

A 23% increase in productivity for organisations deploying the solution as employees have greater flexibility to communicate outside normal office hours as well as save and access all product documents through Microsoft’s OCS.

A 50% reduction in costs as line rental, licensing and ISDN costs are removed from operational overheads.

The new appliance can enable free conference calls for up to 200 people and can be rolled out in under a week. Users can also pilot it and experience the integrated OCS across different groups or departments with a range of USB phones and cameras so as to ascertain which equipment best suits their business needs.

For more information contact Gina Makwana on 020 7549 3096 or email gitam@eurodatasystems.com

WORLD’S FIRST MOBILE CLIENT FOR MICROSOFT OFFICE COMMUNICATIONS SERVER 2007 R2 GROUP CHAT

Formicary, provider of premier systems integration and software solutions, have launched the world’s first secure real-time enterprise mobile client designed to specifically extend and complement the powerful features of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat.

Formicary Mobile Chat allows users to remain fully connected with their teams using Office Communications Server Group Chat to share and access information in a timely and efficient manner, reducing phone and email usage and their associated costs while on the move. It also provides a consistent end user experience to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat for a range of mobile devices including Blackberry.

Instead of being restricted to generic operational settings, Mobile Chat can be customised to replicate an organisation’s existing Group Chat environment so that users can communicate via an interface with which they are already familiar. It releases the information sharing, topic-based, multi-party discussions associated with the Office Communications Server desktop and applies them to the mobile environment, ensuring inclusive, secure communication at all times. Users can then set their presence to show availability and view a list of chat rooms and active discussions in which to participate. Information in the form of text, web-links or file attachments can be shared, while message history allows users to read previous chat messages.

Strategic Unified Communications Consultant for Formicary, Gavin Adam, states:

“Informal knowledge discussions are the fabric of every business, but information has a limited time value. Receiving updates after everyone else makes the news old and essentially worthless. Additionally, in today’s regulatory environment where audit trails are becoming increasingly obligatory, capturing such communication chains can be difficult. Formicary Mobile Chat captures, formalises and shares information, ensuring that teams are always connected and compliant when on the move.”

Organisations that are looking to extend Group Chat into the mobile environment are directed to info@formicary.net for further information and demonstration.